A MxM without romance, A Review of Inferno by N. A. Carson

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. They all simply stared. I tried to move, but remaining upright alone was taking all my strength. I was a monster to them. Everyone had seen my power. I was done here. They’d never let me stay.

Inferno, N.A. Carson

This one might be slightly confusing for some as only one book has been released but I read it on Tapas and there the book is 139 chapters and divided into two volumes. The first is named Inferno and the second is named Polar Flux. To make it easier for me, I will be calling it Inferno and will treat it as one book even though it is technically two.

Firstly, this is a more in-depth review compared to the one on Goodreads as I haven’t, as I mentioned there, read the entire book back then. Now I have and also as I said there, I do apologize since the second book did change some of the problems I have. One of them was even changed by N. A. Carson who themselves explained to me that one of them was a mislabel by Tapas. I did not like that the book was label a romance when the book was only displaying an abusive relationship without any love. Apparently, Tapas had labeled it as a romance but Carson said that it was not meant to be one.

So, what is the book about? It follows a young orphan Fin with an unhealthy obsession of fire. He lives in a small village who hunts all supernatural who they see as demons. Fins fate changes as he turns out to be a firebird, a demon and gets picked up by the Fire God, Zoran, who is the creator of all firebirds and dragons. He is the one that gave fire to the mortal realms. Their relationship is far from harmonious though as Fin is little more than a pet to the god and treated as such. It becomes even worse when the two other fire gods discover them and an age long rivalry between gods stir up to almost destroy the world. 

Inferno have plenty of magic, lore and complex characters which to me have become the insignia for N.A. Carson’s books as I also have read the Demon series which has similar strengths. Both these series have a dark, realistic tone with themes of abusive and domination. These themes are developed and, to me, unnervingly realistic. There is no romantism in there which means that I must put a TRIGGER WARNING, for those who decide or consider exploring this book or anything by N.A. Carson. I am not to sensitive but still dislike abusive relationship. Inferno was on the line of what I could swallow, I would have quitted it if it wasn’t such a good book. I loved the world, the petty gods that reminded me of Greek gods, and I adored the characters. The result was that I wasn’t able to drop this book and was plastered to it all the way to the end.

Now, the negative is the ending. It did not entirely resolve everything. Though I cannot go into spoiler territory, let’s just say that two of the main themes of this book is searching for freedom and defeating addiction. I am not entirely convinced that these two are resolved. I guess I can just have missed it but by the end I just felt, doesn’t this leave Fin just where he started? That is to me not a good thing. I want at least feel like something has changed by the end of the book.

I also felt like the plot keep stomping on the same spot without moving forward for a while. This changed by the second volume but the first one followed a distinct pattern. Zoran orders something, Fin refuses or fails, Zoran punishes Fin, Fin relents then get angry then go back to Zoran and repeat this pattern for the entire book so many times that you wonder if it will ever change. I understand this was part of Fin’s addiction to fire and Zoran is fire, but it happened one to many for me to not consider it a negative.

So, to conclude, I would recommend this book as it is well written, easy to read, with plenty of lore and well-developed characters but I would only do so after giving you a trigger warning. I have read far worse books when it comes to depicting abusive relationship but I still wouldn’t feel comfortable to give this to someone who has experienced abuse before.

Overall, I would give this Inferno a 7 out of 10. I considered giving it an 8 but decided to land it on an seven as the book did drag on a bit in the first volume and the ending was not as satisfying to me as I wanted. The ending might not be a bother for other readers though and can be ranked higher for some but considering these two, rather large, thing I found negative I could not put it at a higher score.

So, what did you thing about this book? Find it interesting enough to read?

If you are interested, you can find it here on Tapas:

https://tapas.io/episode/910234

With kind regards

Senefer